


Dark Places of the Heart

by Domimagetrix



Series: Razwan Bahir, World Guardian [17]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Adult Language, Child Abuse (nonsexual), Combat Injury, Con Artistry, Exploitation, Headcanoned Soul Layouts, Headcanons Everywhere, Mention of torture, Multi, References Trauma and PTSD, Unhealthy Relationships, divergence from canon, manipulative relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 19:04:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14721839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: Seeking the knowledge implanted in Razwan by Oreb Charron post-Menaphos, Nomad acts as a conduit to allow Sliske to visit her soul and attempt to glean something from his memories. Unfortunately for him, it isn't a one-way experience.Featuring my ridiculous headcanons and wild foray into post-current-game events I'm just pulling out of my keister as I go along.





	Dark Places of the Heart

_Ven chica ven loca dame tu boca_  
_Que en esta noche cualquier cosa te toca_  
_Mi corazón de oro es el de un santo_ _  
Dámelo todo me lo merezco tanto_

Zucchero - “Baila Morena”

 

The process of transference bore resemblance to pulling oneself out of a vividly realistic dream back into the real world, only in reverse.

It wasn’t dissimilar to what’d happened years ago in Baba Yaga’s house, but the dream world there had _felt_ dreamlike, gentled and indistinct at the edges. Everything here was as clearly defined as it was when the good surge of fear - the kind that heightened senses - flooded me in combat. An overabundance of sharp, crisp reality.

I knew my body lay supine next to Sliske’s with Quen seated between us. I understood, too, that what I saw now was neither place nor plane but an interpretation, a projection of something that couldn’t declare itself to me in its natural state because I had neither eyes nor ears enough to process the truth.

Knowing it dulled nothing of the projection’s impact.

Sliske’s soul was beautiful.

That it’d taken the Shadow Realm for its basis wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t a place I knew-

_No. No, I’ve been here. I know the bridge out there beyond the ruins. I’ve seen this. Where?_

I looked up. There was no perpetually building storm, no rolling cloud cover at odds with the largely breezeless Shadow Realm.

This sky was warped and distorted by water.

The surface moved as I watched it from my unlikely vantage point, twisting all that existed above it into ever-shifting fingerprints, moonlight pulled thin to outline impermanent concavities and convexities.

Both my hands rose in a warding-off gesture before I could think, panic forcing inhalation through a long, strangled wheeze. My dream-literate mind warred with the inevitability of drowning while simultaneously offering lucid dream logic in a reassuring monotone: _I can breathe so long as I believe it._

Air alone met my hands and filled my lungs. Though the rippling surface above assured me I stood submerged at the bottom of a body of water, there was nothing liquid to be found in the atmosphere down here. My hands fell to my sides and I stared up at the impossible.

Light fell in moving shafts from the water’s surface, cool blue-grays that, as I looked down at the pale sand around my feet, drew meandering, luminous lines across everything. Those lines crawled their sidewinder paths over my boots, over rocks half-buried in the ground, and over the ruins that surrounded me. They slid along grim, sooty stone, and wormed overtop the sharp edges where buildings had collapsed. They crawled over windows, most housing a few lethal-looking shards, some still framing whole stained glass rosettes done in blues, light and dark grays, black, and white. I moved closer to one of the ruins, my steps slow in unnecessary expectation of watery resistance.

Broken stone architecture, in some places low enough to see over the walls, suggested violent catastrophe had befallen it. None of the topmost edges were weatherworn. Zarosian symbols - some whole, some abbreviated in the destruction - stood in relief above arched doorways. Columnar facades bore other symbols, masks contorted into grins and frowns.

The last seemed done as an afterthought, crude carvings jabbed into the stonework by a furious - perhaps petulant - hand.

The flora here wasn’t dessicated the way it was in the Shadow Realm. No trees stood tall, but they did live, their leaves broad and full. Trees, bushes, even weeds contained within them tiny cores of pale blue-gray light that pulsed in the primitive rhythm of a shared heartbeat. In the evergreens, soft luminescence poured through sprays of needles, slivers of it patterning the ground nearby with a dazzling, crystalline effect.

I reached out and brushed the pad of a finger over one of the pristine rosettes, feeling the stain’s subtle texture on the glass, and a voice spoke from behind me. “Verdech’s work.”

I whirled around. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Sliske shook his head. “I’m… _he_ isn’t here. Not his consciousness.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you?”

He sounded like Sliske but didn’t. No dripping sarcasm, and no dripping anything else I could discern in his voice. It was like listening to a talented mimic.

Maybe it was an act. Despite that, something in me _wanted_ to believe. The hatred hadn’t risen at the sight of him. Looking at his face without it unwound something that’d spent too long tensed between my shoulders.

He reached out and touched the side of my face with careful fingertips. “I may not be him, but I do carry his memories well enough to know the source of your mistrust.” The fingertips drifted away from my cheek and his hand returned to his side, occasionally gesturing as he spoke. “Would you hear me out despite that?”

I crossed my arms, fingernails digging into my skin. I jerked my head in a half-nod. “So what the fuck are you?” Tension returned, and I felt the muscles bunch again in my shoulders with the beginning of an angry conclusion. My lip lifted in a snarl. _“Zaros-”_

He shook his head vehemently, another gesture at odds with the reptilian-smooth Sliske. “Not Zaros.” Amber eyes - now featuring a thread of warm brown spiraling from the outside of his irises to his pupils - took in our surroundings before falling back on me. “When the soul is intruded upon from the outside, it produces a more interactive surrogate with which to determine the nature of the intruder. A defensive measure. Oreb Charron recorded something of the phenomenon at my… _his_ suggestion long ago.”

I relaxed a little. “You don’t… sound like Sliske. Or move like him.” It could’ve been a trick.

It could’ve, but it wasn’t.

The surrogate shrugged. “As I said, I’m not him. I have the imprint of his memories, I know what he feels, but the spark of what he is isn’t part of me. A person is more than their soul.”

_“I love you for more than your soul.”_

There was no menace or artifice in him. There was no _Sliske_ in him. The voice was conversational, bereft of undercurrent. He didn’t hold his hands together in front of him, stretching and curling fingers around each other in Sliske’s perpetual display of condescending eagerness, nor did he gesture so as to draw attention to his claws.

This non-Sliske wasn’t empty of everything - there were changes in expression that looked like genuine concern or puzzlement - but he was void of some large, fundamental _something_ that normally radiated from Sliske like heat from sun-baked sand.

I looked out over the spooky, beautiful terrain of his soul. “So you took after the Shadow Realm.”

“Not just any part. I chose artifacts from other parts of his life, including the leavings of Senntisten, but this is the Heart of the Shadow Realm.”

I looked back at him. “The middle?”

The surrogate lifted one hand and waved it in a so-so gesture, strands of water-spun light dancing over the back of it and affording the movement fluidity reminiscent of Sliske’s. “More or less, or at least this part of it. Gielinor has a Heart. So does the Shadow Realm.”

Another look around, and vague recognition became firm with a trace of frustration at not having put two and two together until I’d heard it spoken aloud. The platforms, the bridge ahead, even some of the plants’ placement snapped into alignment with my memory of the Heart.

I squinted, trying to see beyond the alternating light shafts and dimness beyond the bridge. “So the Shadow Realm is, what? Just this twisted version of Gielinor?”

He shook his head. “No. Well… perhaps.”

The soul liaison crouched, holding his hand over the sand and blocking the light from above. “What’s beneath my hand right now?”

I looked away from the bridge and down beneath his splayed fingers. “Sand.”

He looked up at me, a hint of irritation crossing his face. “You’re being deliberately obtuse. I know it’s one of your qualities he doesn’t care for.” He waggled his fingers, making the interruption of light on the sand dance. “A shadow.”

I nodded. “And?”

He stood. “Without my hand, the shadow doesn’t exist. Nothing interrupts the light.”

“I still don’t get it.”

He pointed around us. “While this isn’t the literal Heart but a facsimile, the real thing exists in the Shadow Realm because Gielinor’s own Heart exists.” He shifted his weight and tapped a boot on the sand. “Obviously more complicated than a simple shadow, but the mechanism is similar - this part of the realm is Gielinor’s dark profile. Wherever anything interrupts the span of nothingness, it projects itself just beyond, creating a second, less comprehensive image against a backdrop of more nothingness.”

I took in our surroundings and squinted, tapping my own boot against the sand beneath it in parody of him. “Shadows are just blocked light. This feels a little too solid to be nothing.”

A flicker of irritation creased his features. “A shadow isn’t a complete absence of light. It’s _less_ light, sometimes very little, but it isn’t a loss entire. It _reduces_ light in a place. Do the silhouettes extending out from a building or a person leave you unable to see what’s next to them?”

It made sense. “So there’s less reality. Why…” I struggled with how to articulate it, “...what is the projection falling on? What’s the sand?”

I watched his face smooth in puzzlement, smooth further in understanding, then tense in mild chagrin. “I don’t know. It was something else Verdech worked on when he wasn’t painting glass or teaching, but - to be honest - I paid little attention to his theories. Mizzarch’s brother was insufferably long-winded. Reminded me of Azzanadra in some ways, although he was nowhere near so enthusiastic about his faith.” He winced.

Temptation nearly made me pursue it, but I was more interested in other things. My arms uncrossed and I pointed up. “What’s with the water? Is that part of all this?”

He looked up with me. “That exists in the real realm’s Heart, too. I don’t know what it is.”

“Has anyone ever been up there?”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe anyone has, and - before you ask - I don’t know what produces the light beyond it.”

I grinned, feeling delighted with myself and my own deductive capabilities. “It’s Zanaris, isn’t it?”

Rather than offer me my hard-won surprise, he shrugged. “Likely, but that creates more questions than it answers. Zanaris doesn’t produce light; it reflects it. Where would that light come from in this realm?”

We both looked up again, sharing silence for what felt like several minutes. The surface whorled and undulated above us, influencing the light and refusing to adhere to simple physics.

I looked down, running hands through my hair to shake off an approaching sense of vertigo and too-smallness, then looked back to the dim promise of adventure past the platforms. “What’s beyond the bridge?”

The soul surrogate cast his gaze around himself and sat on a low rise of slate stone near one of the plants. “A maelstrom of magic. Shadow magic. Too strong for anyone to weather long enough to see what exists in this Heart’s core.”

I saw him move in my peripheral vision while watching the slow cascade of light strings dance across the sand in front of me, then walked to him and sat down. Serrated leaves on a plant next to him bobbed in a breeze I couldn’t feel. My leg rested against his. “I wonder what my soul looks like. What Sliske’s seeing in there.”

My companion remained silent. I went on. “I wish I understood him.”

The surrogate shifted next to me. “You could explore his memories as he’s exploring yours and Charron’s.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d have access mine, and I stiffened. “No. I didn’t… negotiate that with him. I’m not going to rifle through those.” I paused. “But I could ask you more questions, couldn’t I?”

It was his turn to grow tense. “You could.”

There was something unspoken there and I chose to ignore it. “Why does he keep…” I made vague gestures in front of me, some part of my mind still unsettled by the lack of water resistance, “...doing all this? With me? What’s the point?”

Disapproval gave way to resignation in his voice. “You read what he wrote on the masks. You know.”

I hissed out air between my teeth. “Why the fuck doesn’t he just say it?”

At this, my companion laughed. “You _have_ met him, haven’t you? And you ask that?”

“I’m serious. Why?”

The laughter drained away. The caramel drizzle decorating his irises drew my eye as he spoke. “Because he knows you. He knows better than to trust you.”

Something wrenched hard in my chest. Anger. And something else. _“Sliske_ doesn’t trust _me.”_

He nodded. “He’s hurt you, toyed with you, frustrated you. Humiliated you. He expects you to take that revelation and wound him in return because you are a very vengeance-minded woman. No slight against you goes unchecked.”

I wanted to argue, but the odd ache in my chest quieted both the desire and my voice. “He doesn’t have to. Hide it. Or make a game of it. He doesn’t have to do that.”

He was silent next to me for a moment. “Perhaps he’ll discover that as he interacts with your soul. Or if he interacts with your memories there.”

Realization hit, and I smiled. “Serves him right.”

The curiosity returned to his voice. He blinked slowly. “What serves him right?”

“What he’s going to see in there.”

He didn’t ask. I didn’t offer. We sat companionably together as translucent pillars of light danced in front of us, as Sliske’s soul surrounded us, and as mysteries rippled above.

 

……….

 

 _I don’t need to know your every trick_  
_So keep me guessing just a little bit_

Sophie Ellis-Bextor - “Me and My Imagination”

 

“Fuck you and _get OUT!”_

Charron had once described the interactive image formed by the soul as a precautionary response, not entirely dissimilar to the human body’s reaction to non-native substances introduced to the flesh. It perceived the foreign and vetted, then either served as a guide for the visiting consciousness or forcibly expelled it.

If I didn’t proceed carefully, Razwan’s soul was going to evict me. Agitating her was something I enjoyed - we both enjoyed, would that she’d admit it - but I was here with a purpose and the tempering presence of her consciousness was absent. Her soul’s ambassador thrummed with too much jagged energy.

It didn’t mean I had to censor myself without margin. I spread my hands, palms-out, and offered her a little bow. “As soon as my objective’s completed, pet. I won’t tarry a moment beyond; you have my word.”

We stood in a stone hallway with an arched opening leading out to a wide, sand-coated enclosure. In some places, vivid red lines slashed the stone walls in unmarred uniformity, their few angles each as sharp and artificial as those lines which lay parallel to each other. I’d seen those patterns in some of the mechanisms Charron had brought with him from Teragard, engraved in metal and carrying electrical signals from point to point, pathways he’d called “circuits” in a tone that suggested deviation in meaning from what I understood.

She brought her hands together, wringing them in indecision, then stepped forward and rested them against the front of my robe. I couldn’t tell if she was preparing to shove me away or embrace me until she rested her forehead against my chest and spoke. “A minute. Just a minute.”

I gave her that minute, stilling a hand that wanted to amuse itself in her hair.

She shuddered. “I need her back.” She looked up at me.

Her eyes had changed again. No longer featuring rings or striations, the brown had disappeared entirely in yellow gold. The whites, too, had gone, now every bit as black as her pupils.  
  
Mahjarrat eyes. Not mine, no matter their having adopted my colors. They sought something in my face with a small measure of her own personality despite the absence of her consciousness. Pleaded with me. Openly. Bare of her defenses.

She shivered again, slim muscles and fall of hair both gripped in a tremor. “Just go do what you need to do, Sliske. I need her back.”

This lack of fortitude, the strength that typically lent more substance to her volatility, was disconcerting. I draped an arm over her shoulders and pressed gently, an unspoken suggestion for her to move with me as I approached the entryway, feeling vibratory intensity wherever we touched. “What would ease your mind, my heart?”

She froze, turning, and shoved at me, meeting too much resistance and instead forcing herself backward in an awkward stumble. _“Don’t._ Don’t fucking do that.”

She crossed her arms in front of herself as I spoke. I mirrored the action. “Do what, pet?”

 _“That._ Don’t fucking patronize me. That look. That fucking… _fuck_ your pity. It’s bad enough coming from Wahisietel.” Her fingers gripped her upper arms, tips seeking faint traces of old scars and pressing tighter there, making pale, lightning-struck dimples in her flesh. “He always looks at me like I’m some kind of tragedy in progress, but I can deal with that. You can take your pity and fuck yourself with it.”

I couldn’t suppress a grin. “Are you saying you expect better of me than of Wahisietel?”

The question seemed to give her pause before another shiver tightened her grip on herself. “Go. Go do what you need to do.”

She turned and began walking away. I didn’t understand, and curiosity prompted me to call out after her. “Where are you going?”

She paused, half turning, and waved at the entryway. “You’ll figure it out. I can’t handle the screaming right now.”

I nodded, reminded again of her consciousness-bereft state. “The wailing of your victims as their lives drains out along your swords, pet? I rather had the impression you enjoyed that.”

She shook her head, turning away and continuing her stiff-legged trek to elsewhere. “The crowds.”

She left me, following the dim hallway, ruby lines glowing and highlighting her tidy little form until she’d turned down some other corridor and disappeared. While tempted to follow and glean more from my little World Guardian in her vulnerable state, there were other concerns. Time wasn’t limitless.

I thought back to her eyes, and glanced again at Charron’s techno-detritus leavings in her soul. _Perhaps not so limited now._

My thoughts grew long as I stepped through the archway and into the arena. She would have access to my memories in whatever form my soul and ambassador took, an availability that would present her with temptation. I was of a mind that she knew most of the recent history, particularly those things which pertained to her, but there was a broad span of my life that would paint me in an even less forgiving light were it revealed without context. Things that would shed light where I much preferred shadow.

The reverie was interrupted by a thunderous roar of an audience. Around me, humans stood, stamping the boards beneath their feet and howling a mixture of encouragements and less comprehensible things that devolved to simple animal sounds in the din. Bloodthirst turned a few voices into something high, eager, the call of predatory birds as their prey began to stumble and signal defeat. These were shrill, peppering the onslaught of noise with hungry whining.

I threw my arms wide and bowed. This audience wasn’t one I comprehended entirely, but I was no stranger to the hunger for drama, and what was an arena like this but a stage? I had all the credentials of a performer. An arsenal of personae awaiting nothing save an appropriate setting. This lot sought a champion, and a champion I would deliver. The crowds above seemed to appreciate my effort, rewarding it with more cheering and a few catcalls.

As I straightened, the first of my opponents came into view.

A biped, barely, bovine and humanoid features blended in such a way as to make him top-heavy, but the combination wasn’t without its artistic quality. Great brown-furred fists clenched and unclenched. Hooves served in lieu of feet, one drawing a groove in the sand as it strafed back before settling next to the other. Blunt aggression dulled the brown of his eyes.

Somewhere within the stadium above, a gong sounded.

The minotaur barrelled forward and I crouched.

Crouched lower as he neared the point of collision.

His thin lower leg impacted my shoulder as inertia kept him moving, and the pained, low bleat from above accompanied the dull snap of bone next to my ear. The impact drew a low grunt out of me, but there was no pain to speak of. Relief danced with disappointment as the mass of him skidded across my back and impacted the sand with an abrupt cessation of his agonized cry.

Before I could stand again, the arena, the crowd, and my opponent disappeared in a hard flash of white light.

 

\-- -- --

 

_So the minotaur wasn’t a memory. That was her soul, too. The arena._

I had little time to process the ramifications of that before my surroundings redefined themselves as one of the larger human settlements. Buildings stood in clusters with little space dividing them, and those individuals making their way past me seemed as disinterested in my presence as they were with their own surroundings. Natives, and unaware of me courtesy of memory integrity.

A castle stood not too distant, its towers rising above the humbler structures around it in a proclamation of authority. Quartz-striated granite made up the walls and foundation stones of both home and shop. Ardougne, perhaps. Varrock?

The structures were polished and well-maintained, too-even flagstones interrupting the grass as the common crystal in their makeup winked in the sunlight. I looked to my right, and a statue of Saradomin returned my inspection with an uninspired, benevolent expression that bespoke its creator’s equally uninspired reverence.

I snorted at it. Falador. _Lumbridge with a better budget._

A voice, smoothed and lightened with youth but familiar, spoke behind me.

“You’re my… assistant! A student learning the _mysterious, arcane_ practice of spirit removal in the ways of the ancient desert mystic. And stop looking at me like I have a booger on my face.”

I turned, and was greeted by a wholly ridiculous sight.

It was Razwan, but younger. Perhaps fifteen years all total, were I to hazard a guess, although pegging human ages had always been something of a struggle since they aged so rapidly. She could’ve been younger still. Her voluminous getup obscured enough of her frame that nothing could contribute to the evidence one way or the other.

She was wearing the most unsightly array of colored silks I’d ever had the misfortune of laying eyes upon, large ones wrapped together in semblance of a robe so objectively hideous I had to blink until I’d adjusted to the insult of it. She’d allowed her hair to fall free, a wild tumble of black curls that spilled to midway down her back, and had adorned it with a number of equally brilliant-hued feathers.

The boy with whom she travelled, dressed in more subdued clothing and looking near the same age, paused and crossed his arms over his thin chest. “Nobody’s going to buy this, Razwan. Why can’t we just pop a window, grab something, and beat feet out of here?”

She stopped and turned, stepping in and speaking _sotto voce_ to avoid prying ears. “Because stealing means a report to the guards. Searching. People reminded that they saw two foreigners walking around town. I want to be able to come back here if I need more money.” She gave him a critical once-over, nearly-black eyes squinting in thought, then worked one of her feathers out of a curl with nimble little fingers before winding the shaft into his hair, pressing it in until it stood at a surprised angle from his head. It matched the nonplussed expression on the boy’s face.

Razwan nodded her satisfaction, smiling, and put her palms on either of the boy’s cheeks. “There. Now try to look, I don’t know, innocent. Confused.”

He performed admirably.

She leaned in. I thought her readying herself to kiss him, but she instead used one palm to give his cheek an encouraging pat. “Good job. Just keep making that face and light my herb bundles when I wave them at you, and we’ll be _rolling in gold_ in no time.”

The boy sighed. “Fine, just try not to get us arrested. We’re in Falador. If they see that necklace you’re wearing-”

Her hands fell to her sides and she looked over her shoulder at a young couple wiping their shoes on a rug just outside their door, a pair of women with eyes more for each other than anything around them.

Razwan grinned. “Nobody’s going to see a fucking thing. Get your game face on, Ozan.”

As I watched, her entire demeanor changed. Her eyes widened, her posture became a gently servile cringe, and she developed grandiose gesticulation to accompany… an accent. A _new_ accent-

“Effendis, I beseech you both, do not step love’s gentle foot in this spirrrit-encumbered place! A presence too foul haunts within!”

-and a terrible accent. Some ghastly hybrid of her own Pollnivnean and western Morytanian, glued together with an abundance of rolled r’s. Something in my jaw tensed with itchy pressure.

The pair of women turned to her, sharing startlement with the feather in Ozan’s hair. The taller of the two - blonde of hair and wide of eye - answered. “This is our house, eh-,” her brows crinkled, “-offendi?”

Razwan clapped her hands together against her chest in exaggerated dismay. “Yourrr home? You share yourrr young love here with the troubled prrresence from beyond the veil of _death?”_ One hand snapped out and found Ozan’s arm as though seeking support. “And to know nothing of it, ah, the power of love is stronger than so much. Tell me, please, have you known struggle since moving to this place? Arrrguments, moments of irrrationality, times of painful discord between you?”

I bit my lip as _times_ became _thymes_ in her fervor. The blonde, however, seemed to notice nothing, answering in a relieved tone as her companion continued to blink emptily at Razwan’s performance. “We do, sometimes, yes! Do you mean our house is haunted?”

The other woman, shorter and less enthusiastic, spared an irritated glance at the first but said nothing, returning her focus to Razwan. “Not that arrrguments,” she caught herself, wincing, _“arguments_ are unusual in a relationship. It doesn’t mean-”

Razwan waved in wild dismissal. “Ah, but none like these, I would set my coin pouch upon it! Deeperrr than the trrrivial things which plague the young.”

The women shared a glance between each other. The blonde looked back at Razwan and Ozan. “We can’t afford to move. We were lucky to find this house after we got married, so near the shops, in the good section of town-” Her hand sought her wife’s and held it.

The “good section of town” coincided with a fraction of a second’s break in Razwan’s stride, but only just. Recovering, she offered her services as a Kharidian mystic to expunge the “wayward spirit and its negative energies,” and was invited inside alongside her “assistant.”

I followed them. Razwan withdrew bundles of herbs tied together at their bases, her “assistant” producing a tinderbox and lighting them, and began dancing around the tidily furnished home.

Perhaps _dancing_ forgave too much. She weaved, arms circling and drawing smoke designs in the air, taking exaggerated steps into each of the rooms while muttering a mixture of her broken, r-emphasizing Asgarni, Pollnivnean, and nonsensical syllables. Finding something akin to a rhythm, she widened her stance, skitter-skipping from one side of the room to the other and shaking her pungent bouquets with enough enthusiasm to send smoldering bits of herb falling to the floor.

My hand covered my mouth without thought. I wanted to laugh. Part of me was dying, gasping its last.

She began shouting as she danced. “Tibhalla-wallifan! Begone, and I call upon the purifying waters of Elidinis herself!” She pressed both herb bundles into one hand and dug deep into some fold of her makeshift robes, pulling out a sifting wad of sand and scattering it with forceful flicks of her wrist. “Thrrrice-blessed sand from the banks of Elid, cleanse this home of foul forrrces!”

Then, in softer Pollnivnean, _“And burn this fuck-ugly carpet while you’re at it.”_

Ozan and I made simultaneous sounds, his quieter than mine. I bent over, leaning against the wall, shaking helplessly.

She was a disaster.

Despite my mounting hysteria, the women seemed bereft of misgivings, entranced with this comical desert “mystic” and her incomprehensible babble. With a theatrical, silk-splaying twirl, she pronounced the house clean, and made short negotiation of her price with the grateful couple.

I was flabbergasted. The entire ordeal had been hammy and appalling from the moment she’d spied the couple at their doorstep to her and Ozan’s departure, yet they’d met with success. I followed them long enough to hear their conversation once they’d put some distance between themselves and the now ghost-free house.

Razwan patted her coin pouch, its girth jingling with the contact. “Like I said, rolling in gold.” She side-eyed Ozan. “There were some dowry gems in the bedroom. You can still pop their window if you want to.”

Ozan shook his head, snorting, withdrawing the feather from his hair and tossing it aside. “Y’know, don’t ever quote me on this, but I think I’ll pass. They’ve been through enough. _I’ve_ been through enough.”

She laughed, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “Then let’s get to living like a pair of nobles. Couple of rooms in that fancy inn in Al Kharid. Wine and beautiful women from sundown to dawn!”

At this, Ozan’s smile bloomed, and for the first time I saw a spark of the irreverence that must’ve bound these two together in criminal partnership. He wound a companionable arm around her shoulders. “And lots of loose coin pouches.”

Razwan snorted, and both of them staggered in laughter-drunkenness as they weaved through puzzled-looking pedestrian traffic, most giving her eccentric getup second and third glances as they passed.

I stopped, chuckling.

_How is it you’d put it, my heart? “What the fuck?”_

My chuckle dissolved as Falador did, a wash of bright light returning me to the arena.

 

……….

 

 _Take your defenses_  
_Put them away_  
_You’re just pretending_  
_This is your way_  
  
Timo Maas Feat. Neneh Cherry - “High Drama”

 

“Who was Alotor?”

Sliske’s soul liaison seemed uncomfortable again, alternating shafts of light and dark doing little to obscure the pinched look in his eyes. “Azzanadra’s younger brother.”

I fed him his own irritated look from earlier. “I want to know why.”

He opened his mouth to speak, halted, then closed it with a look of frustration. “They shared parentage.”

He’d reached for a witty retort. It seemed Sliske’s consciousness embodied more than layers of obfuscation and misdirection; while it had been an attempt, the jab lacked Sliske’s polished delivery. This replica seemed aware of his own mediocre performance and looked away.

I assembled what little tact I had and ignored the bland results of his effort. “You know what I mean. Sliske killed him. Why?”

He continued staring into the distance. “Alotor was a problem. The Mahkorat were a problem. He solved both.”

I looked out in the same direction, warring between the desire to rail at him for being vague and dropping the subject. Instead, I stayed quiet, watching as the source of light above the water - whether it offered it directly or reflected it from still elsewhere - moved away, evidenced in the dimming of light around us. The plants’ small cores seemed brighter for it.

Not-Sliske made the choice for me. “Some humans are born without something that tempers their crueler urges. Most look to one another and seek commonalities and community while a few harbor no such instinct, instead mimicking what they’re missing by studying the behaviors of others around them.”

I nodded. He seemed to realize it despite never looking at me.

“I don’t need to tell you that Mahjarrat and humans are different, but in this small thing, there is a similarity. You see cruelty where we see necessity.”

I nodded again.

He spoke stiffly. “We aren’t without a form of empathy, not entirely. Our reasoning may be inscrutable to you, but we do most of what we do to preserve ourselves, to excise weakness from the tribe. Still, we don’t _lack_ the instinct to protect each other despite what the rituals did to us.”

Not-Sliske sat back then forward, seemingly as much for comfort as to give himself time to consider his words. “As is the case with humans, there are those of us born with no protective drive for their fellows. Alotor was one. Azzanadra refused to see the signs, as did others, but I… saw enough. Enough to know that he was not simply a powerful youth, but a danger to the rest of us.”

I turned to face him, crossing my legs atop the stone. “Tell me.”

He continued to stare off into the fading light. The thin sliver of iris I could see moved as though hungrily memorizing the layout of the soul from which he’d emerged. Or seeing another landscape entirely. “He’d torn into another boy. Not fighting the way we do when our strengths emerge and we seek measurement of that ability, but torn. Grinning at the mess he’d made.”

The word dragged something beneath my skin. _Torn._ “So you killed him to protect the boy.”

He shook his head. “No. I, or _he,”_ he waved a frustrated hand in front of him, “I killed him to protect the rest of us. We lost some to youthful trials, a culling of its own, but Alotor knew his strength. He’d proven himself long before and had taken another unaware, testing not his own strength but how much pain could be endured by another.” He adjusted his position again. “He would’ve grown to adulthood and continued. Perhaps learned to better hide his empty sadism, but would’ve gone on and endangered the Mahjarrat. Set upon his own kind during a lull in competition.”

I wanted to set a comforting hand on him. I also wanted to run the hell away from his matter-of-fact tone. “And the Mahkorat?”

He shrugged. “All of Mah’s children competed. On Freneskae, you use your claws or you sharpen them; there is little else unless you’re powerful enough to carve that something else out for yourself.” He _hmphed_ and the ghost of a smile traced his features. “Or you did what Wahisietel did and made yourself impressive in ways beyond mere power.”

The light from above had diminished further, and our surroundings were highlighted more by the plants’ own light, reminding again of the difference between this and the true Shadow Realm.

I thought back to my time after our encounter with Oreb. “And Akthanakos?”

“Akthanakos is the gentlest of us. He found his place on Gielinor, among humans, among other sentient beings whose doings were never limited to war and survival.” He looked reluctant to say more.

I wasn’t having it. “But?”

Not-Sliske finally turned his head, looking at me. His jaw was set in a grim line. “Zamorak ascended by a mixture of determination and fortuitous timing. Azzanadra may, and that ascension will almost certainly end him.” He straightened a little and stared off into the dim reaches again. “But, had he any interest in it at all, I believe he would’ve ascended to true godhood - not myth, but godhood in earnest - a very long time ago.”

 

……….

 

There were too many memories of battle in Razwan’s soul. It seemed I could no more direct their theme toward a desired one than I could change the woman herself.

With each combatant in the arena, I was drawn to other arenas. Blood soaked the sand as I watched creatures - sentient and not - do their best and their worst to Razwan as a youth, as a young adult, as a full adult. I watched her lean tiredly on the metal bars of her cage as she commiserated with a dying air mage, then face a younger version of that same air mage in a Karamjan fighting ring that featured prominently among her memories.

With the younger Razwan came another presence. A tutor of sorts, bald and spare of frame, although what tutelage he offered was a mystery to me. Most of his shouts into the arena amounted to meaningless hardassery - “show no mercy!” “you do it or you die!” “kill or stain the ground with your weakness!” - and what few instances I was able to bear witness to events after those fights inevitably included her instructor and some nobleman exchanging considerable sums of money, generally in the instructor’s favor and with displeasure on the part of the noble.

Air mages, fire mages, ogres, and various exotica imported from unlikely places for the viewing pleasure of the crowds. A different arena, this one grassy rather than sand-coated, featured a fight with Khazard, and I was taken aback.

She’d defeated him, after a fashion. Escape or no, she’d bested him.

It hadn’t been enough to rescue her ailing… acquaintance? Friend? Their interaction had been strange to my ears. Wenu had expired sometime during the fight, and I watched, puzzled, as she’d responded to the message struck in the wall with another of her own. “Wenu’s memory lives.”

Nothing of Charron’s memories could be accessed, but curiosity led me to make the attempt many times before the soul arena began to blur. In some ways, her upbringing had been more reminiscent of the Mahjarrat than what I’d experienced of the human.

Nomad was signalling an end to it.

I retreated to the hallway, patting the red wounds in the stone and getting nothing for my efforts.

I couldn’t be faulted for failure. There was no avenue for reaching whatever memories of Charron’s existed in Razwan’s soul. Not like this, anyway.

The crowd cheered on from beyond the entrance and I ignored it, inclining myself against the wall with my arms crossed.

There was naught to do but wait.

 

………

 

  
  
  
  
Despite the dimness around me, there was enough to be seen by the plants’ glow to notice the blurring of lines, a drunken twist of the soul’s layout.

I rested a hand on the surrogate’s arm. “It’s almost time. That’s Nomad’s signal.”

He nodded. “Good.” He shook his head as though he, too, saw the changes around us. “I don’t feel complete without him. I need him returned.”

My vision blurred again and I withdrew my hand. “Thank you for telling me. About Alotor. About Trindine.”

I couldn’t see well enough, but his voice was still clear. “He may not be pleased at your curiosity, or at it being appeased. He wasn’t before.”

 _The journal._ I nodded.

His hand found my arm this time. “Why do I exist?”

Comprehension didn’t dawn on me immediately, but it wasn’t long in coming. I placed my hand over his, squeezing. “Because my aunt is a meddling witch with a lot more power than I gave her credit for.”

“No. You could’ve refused to give him the last capsule. Why did you give me a soul?”

The world blurred anew and I answered him, hoping as the Shadow Realm’s Heart began to retreat that he heard me. “Because I refuse to go anywhere you can’t come with me. Even the afterlife.”

I heard something of his voice, faint, too faint.

I clung fruitlessly to the sound as I was drawn from Sliske’s soul.

 

………

 

A hand squeezed mine, and I sat up, groaning. On the other side of Quen, I heard Sliske doing the same with an infuriating lack of effortful noise, only the shift of his robe announcing the fact.

My head was still half-ringing with the new information. Alotor. Sliske’s mistrust. The strange boon that Trindine had been to him after, when her mischief and encouragement had levered Sliske from the somber pit in which he’d mired himself for a time after Alotor’s death. Her cleverness and his experience complementing each other, an exchange made over time until balance between them had been achieved.

I started to speak, but a sound turned the effort inward and extinguished it.

Quen was gasping.

He crawl-scrambled from his seat between us, leaving something that looked like the dehydrated remnants of a jellyfish strewn on the ground in his wake.

Several remnants, glowing faintly blue with soul energy.

Before the urge to reach out and touch them could be realized, Death materialized between us and stooped, holding out a skeletal hand and drawing the withered things on the ground into a whirling mass bobbing in a telekinetic hold above his palm. Straightening, he eyed the three of us in turn, his gaze falling on Nomad last.

“A few, only a few, but it is a beginning. Perhaps what was done can be undone after all.”

He dematerialized too quickly for any of us to respond.

Sliske spoke as he got to his feet, seeming unperturbed by Death's brief appearance. “I’m afraid the experiment was a failure, love. Charron’s memories defied me-”

“-No.” Quen stood. A smile, sight unseen behind his scarf, made itself apparent his voice. “It was no failure.”

He turned, took several steps toward his tent, stopped, and turned back to us. “Thank you both. I need time, time away from both of you to study what happened here. Perhaps…” soul magic haze stirred around his eyes as he looked at each of us. “It may be nothing, or it may be the key.”

Quen gave us a complicated look before turning and disappearing within the confines of his old tent. Footfall and heavy sounds followed in his wake, a great door opening and closing firmly behind him.

A gloved hand introduced itself to my field of vision. I took it, standing carefully, and looked up at the man attached to it.

Gold irises, spiraled with the faintest thread of warm brown, stared back at me with the full of Sliske behind them. “Did you enjoy yourself, my heart? Take in the scenery with those new eyes of yours?” Curiosity and danger bled together in his voice.

I stepped forward, letting go of his hand and holding the lapels of his robe in a loose grip, resting the side of my face against his chest. Revulsion - dimmer now - tried to worm its way up and I shoved it away tiredly. “Did you? Is your curiosity satisfied now?”

He paused, then pressed me into a physically awkward embrace. “Not quite. Somehow you retain some mystery no matter how far I dig, pet. What goes through your mind at this very moment escapes me.”

I looked up at him. He was dangerous, unpredictable, returned to the embodiment of risk I'd come to know, so much as he could ever be known. Returned to the enigma to whom I'd gifted a soul and come to think of as my own. “Take me to the Heart, Sliske.”

His smile was both knowing and puzzled. “Didn’t we have a bit of a spat the last time we encountered each other there?”

I smiled back. “Not that Heart.”

Surprise lit his features, and not unpleasant surprise. “You _were_ busy in there. Do tell.”

We drew shadows from the beginnings of evening to us, abandoning Soul Wars for other, stranger climes, and I told.

Not everything, but I told.


End file.
